Bolt Action

I got my introduction to Bolt Action last night at the club and overall I enjoyed the experience. I started real wargaming with Charles Grant's book 'Battle' which was WWII, in those days it was all Airfix figures and my armies were a bit like the movies the German stuff was mainly allied but with a grey paint job and black crosses. I remember being particularly impressed by the movie 'Tobruk' with George Peppard, I think that was the first time I had ever seen a half-track and I wanted one. Things very slowly improved and you could eventually get more than that Airfix Tiger, which was the first tank kit I ever built, PzIV's took a while to turn up if I remember correctly. I eventually gave up WWII and turned to medieval armies.

Oh, one more thing, and it makes me smile even today. Having been brought up on Captain Hurricane, Commando Comics and Matt Braddock, who could loop the loop in a Stirling bomber I was perplexed at why the British had to take a morale check. Obviously the Germans, Italians and Japanese along with our allies would run, but the British?

Back to Bolt Action, I was the Germans and Simon was the Russians, Andy would umpire and explain the rules, Simon also had the rulebook while I had gone online and downloaded some QRS's. I think the scenario was one of simple attrition, I had a Panther, a 50mm A/T gun, a mortar, HMG and four squads, the Russians had a similar sort of force but with a T34/85. The great thing about this WWII game for me is that everyone gets to move, you don't know who or when, but you can formulate a proper plan and attempt to carry it out, you won't have a tank crew stop and brew a cuppa for several hours in this game.

My forces.

The dastardly Soviets.

The main feature of the battlefield was a large ruined church in the middle, I decided to go for it and early on brought my HMG and A/T gun on to keep the Russians away, thankfully I managed this before the T34 turned up, my Panther was also put on the same flank, the Russian tank of course then came on on the opposite flank. I won the race to the church but threw some dire dice and one squad panicked and fled, just great. I recovered extremely well and moved the Panther forward to a small rise where it commanded the ground in front of the church, it also managed to catch a Russian squad in the open and annihilated them. Simon then brought his tank forward to support his infantry and this time the dice gods were with me a Panzerschrek team I had rushed forward took a beautiful shot at the T34 and brewed it.

I close down the left flank and advance on the church.

 With the open terrain, me holding the church and his tank gone Simon was suddenly on the back foot, his only A/T forces were a medium gun and an A/T rifle, and we all know how effective that is. At this point we called a German win.

The end game with the unlucky T34.

The rules play fast (once learned of course) and for the purists may over generalise certain aspects, I had read about ranges being a problem but I didn't notice anything wrong with this game. I had expected the rulebook to be better considering the background of the authors, it needs an index and we had a few problems finding what we required, the direct firing of HE was not very clear and examples would have been a huge improvement. I only had the opportunity to look at the book a couple of times so perhaps it is better than my first impression.

We have another game scheduled for a couple of weeks away so I shall watch some more YouTube videos and be more prepared, I am not prepared at the moment to sink £25 into the rulebook to play the odd game with someone else's toys, but, like Muskets and Tomahawks it is on the back burner.